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In this exploration of murder in the nineteenth century, Judith Flanders explores some of the most gripping cases that fascinated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction. She retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder--both famous and obscure--from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London's East End; Burke and Hare and their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; and Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancee around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the dangerous to know, "The Invention of Murder" is both a gripping tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.… (more)
You'd think a book titled The invention of Murder couldn't be boring.Sadly, that wasn't the case with this book. The author discussed over 50 murders that took place during 19th century Great Britain. And while the descriptions of the murders themselves were interesting, it was the repetitive way the author then went on to describe how these murders were covered by newspapers, and then turned into works of fiction or plays. We were given, again and again. brief summaries of numerous books and plays. Frankly, these endless plot summaries bored me senseless . I almost never stop reading a book before finishing it, this one really tempted me, but I finally made it to the end. ( )
I just can't with this book. I've tried to read it three times (in fact, the last time I checked it out, I realized my bookmark was still where I had left off...on page 120.) It just feels really disorganized, and the writing was just not engaging enough for me. As a primarily fiction reader, I like non-fiction with a more narrative style. This just didn't quite do it for me. ( )
Interesting book about the way Victorians looked at murder and executions as entertainmentand the development of detection and scientific rigor in police work. ( )
Scratch John Bull and you find the ancient Briton who revels in blood, who loves to dip deep into a murder, and devours the details of a hanging." So said the Pall Mall Gazette in 1887. Its immediate justification was the success of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which had been published the previous year and had already sold 40,000 copies. But it would be just as easy to prove the same point at any time during the last couple of centuries. And in our own time as well, as every bestseller list and TV schedule reminds us. Murder is as much a British preoccupation as football or the weather.
'We are a trading community - a commercial people. Murder is, doubtless, a very shocking offence; nevertheless, as what is done is not to be undone, let us make our money out of it.' 'Blood', Punch, 1842
Dedication
For Susan and Ellen without whom...
First words
'Pleasant it is, no doubt, to drink tea with you sweetheart, but most disagreeable to find her bubbling in the tea-urn.'
Quotations
Up close and doun the stair, / But and ben wi' Burke and Hare. / Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, / Knox the boy that buys the beef.
...So the Clerk and the wife, they each took a knife, / And the nippers that nipp'd the loaf sugar for tea; / With the edges and points they severed the joints / At the clavicle, elbow, hip, ankle, and knee. / Thus, limb from limb they dismember'd him / So entirely, that e'en when they came to his wrists, / With those great sugar nippers they nipp'd off his 'flippers' / As the Clerk, very flippantly, termed his fists. / ...They determined to throw it where no one could know it, / Down the well, - and the limbs in some different place. / ...They contrived to pack up the trunk in a sack, / Which they hid in an osier-bed outside the town, / The Clerk bearing arms, legs, and all on his back, / As that vile Mr. Greenacre served Mrs. Brown...
What a specimen would it be for some future historian of English civilization, of English humanity...a girl of 20, driven nearly to insanity by the appalling prospect of a violent death to one so young and so weak...shrieking and desperate...while the representative of civilized justice and the minister of a Christian creed looked on at the legal murder... - Daily News, 1849
When the sun rose brightly...it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the image of the Devil. When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there was no belief among men but that they perished like the beasts. - Charles Dickins
In this exploration of murder in the nineteenth century, Judith Flanders explores some of the most gripping cases that fascinated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction. She retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder--both famous and obscure--from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper to the tragedies of the murdered Marr family in London's East End; Burke and Hare and their bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; and Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancee around town by omnibus. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the dangerous to know, "The Invention of Murder" is both a gripping tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
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